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Crime

Constance: Slain doorman buried

August 4, 2017

The nightclub doorman shot dead in southwestern Germany last Sunday has been buried in the presence of 800 mourners. Police who later shot dead the assailant are still trying to trace the origin of his US-made M16 rifle.

Deutschland Schüsse in Diskothek in Konstanz
Image: picture alliance/dpa/F. Kästle

Muslim rites were observed at Thursday's burial of the doorman fatally shot at the entrance of the nightclub in Constance's industrial area in the German state of Baden-Württemberg before dawn last Sunday.

Police, using club video material to piece together how the weapon was obtained and also used to severely wound three other people, said the attacker would be buried Friday.

They have ruled out terrorism as a motive, saying private grounds seem to have been behind the outrage. He had returned to the club and shot the doorman after a row.

Nightclub to reopen

The discotheque Club Grey said it would reopen on Friday, adding that it had suspended the discotheque's manager, who was the brother-in-law of the gunman.

The club told guests that Friday night's earnings would be donated to the dead doorman's family.

Returned in a taxi

Prosecutors said the 34-year-old gunman of Iraqi-Kurdish origin, who had arrived in Germany in 1991 as a child and had a record of assault and drug offences, began firing outside the club as he alighted from a taxi on Sunday.

He got as far as the club's foyer as nightclub visitors locked themselves in toilets before fleeing when a bartender opened an emergency exit.

Police later found more than 20 cartridges on the discotheque's grounds.

The shooting in Constance, which borders Switzerland, came just two days after Germany was shaken by a fatal knife attack in Hamburg.

ipj/gsw (AFP, dpa)

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